QPR face one of their fellow newly promoted sides for the first time this season when they travel to Norwich on Saturday. The Canaries have made a similarly bright start to life in the top flight.
The general consensus seems to be that Norwich are a wonderful addition to this year’s Premiership. A friendly, family club in a sleepy part of the country with a fantastic young manager and a competitive team assembled almost entirely through good scouting of the Football League.
They have a compact, modern stadium (a corner of which is laughably dubbed The Snake Pit) with celebrity chef Delia Smith and manic depressive Stephen Fry in the posh seats. They play in an attractive style and they’re one of the Premier League’s founder members to boot. There’s never a hint of trouble at home games - the Norwich fans sing the world’s oldest (and most ridiculous) football chant On The Ball City with arms outstretched and faces contorted with God knows what, sup real ale and walk around in bright yellow shirts.
You’ll rarely hear anybody with a bad word to say about this club. A pundit on BBC Radio Five Live recently offered the following analysis of the Canaries’ tactical set up for the top division: “The thing with Paul Lambert is he just tells them to go out there and play.” Sorry, a little bit of sick came up when I wrote that, do excuse me.
If you believe that the remarkable job Lambert has done in this part of the world over the past two and a bit years is based around a simple pre-match team talk of: “You know what lads, just go out there and play” then you’re an idiot, but it’s typical of the sort of coverage Norwich get. They’re either ignored or praised, never criticised. You’ll never hear anybody say “£2.5m is a bit much for James Vaughan” for instance. They’re too busy hailing the work that Paul Lambert has done, reminding people that Swansea play nice football, and that Chelsea have a young manager, and collecting big chunks of license fee payers’ money for the privilege.
There is plenty of justification for this sycophantic coverage to be fair – Norwich are one of British football’s current big success stories. QPR don’t win here often, but when Iain Dowie’s side secured a backs to the wall 1-0 success at Carrow Road in 2007 the home side was in possession of a one way ticket to what a famous fictional radio DJ from these parts might have called Shattered Dreams Parkway.
They’d slipped out of the Premiership after just a single season in 2005, largely thanks to an away record of 19 matches without a single victory, and then kept faith with the manager who oversaw it all just that little bit too long. QPR did their bit for Nigel Worthington’s cause, throwing away a two goal lead on this ground late in the game in 2006 to lose when a victory for Gary Waddock’s team would have surely seen Worthington sacked – they were queuing round the ground to sign a petition demanding his dismissal before the game that day.
Once relegated your parachute payments are key. Get back up while they’re coming in or prepare to follow Leeds, Southampton, Bradford, Forest, QPR and others down a well worn path of doom to regular fixtures with Swindon and Hartlepool. Worthington was dismissed having wasted the last of the parachute money and the first dozen or so games of the 2006/07 season. Peter Grant, a midfielder known for breaking Paul Murray’s leg during his Norwich playing career, was poached from West Ham’s coaching team but was out of his depth. Again they made the mistake of letting him spend the summer budget and start the following season before sacking him forcing a new manager to work with a spent budget and somebody else’s players.
Glenn Roeder came in and used the connections gathered as West Ham and Newcastle manager to bring in a host of Premiership loans including a young and less rapey Ched Evans to great effect. They survived, QPR again doing their bit with a pathetic 3-0 defeat at Carrow Road at the end of 2007/08 to shove the hosts over the line. But when the loans went back that summer Roeder struggled to replicate success in his first full season. QPR’s 1-0 win was one of many setbacks and by the time Norwich returned the favour to Paulo Sousa’s QPR side in the pouring rain at Loftus Road later that season Roeder had been replaced by club legend Bryan Gunn. In one of the all time classic football quotes Delia Smith accused Roeder of being rude and abrasive, and said the new man would have to know “the Norfolk way” of doing things. Let’s be having you and all that.
Gunn certainly knew the Norfolk way having spent almost his entire adult life playing for and working with Norwich City – manager was just about the only post he hadn’t held at the club and it turned out there was a reason for that. Although he picked Roeder’s limp team up and shook a bit of life from it he couldn’t save it from relegation and so despite boasting a colossal number of season ticket holders Norwich found themselves in tier three for 2008/09, a division Gunn said they would have to consolidate in and build from – starting with a 7-1 home defeat by Colchester United.
Paul Lambert was the U’s manager that day and was quickly offered the chance to replace Gunn – the full details of that, and what happened next, to follow shortly in the manager profile. Two years later and not only are Norwich a Premiership side once more, but they’re competing well in the top flight. QPR are competing well too, but they’re doing it having gone out and signed some proven Premiership players whereas Norwich have backed their manager’s judgement of a lower league player who can step up. Their big summer outlay was on Millwall striker Steve Morrison and Everton forward James Vaughan who’d been on loan at Crystal Palace last season. Critics dubbed them ‘Premiership lite’ signings but the way they’ve performed so far has seen the sceptics melt into the hand clasped admiration brigade pretty quickly.
All of this seems to niggle QPR fans, who are naturally pre-disposed to dislike Norwich anyway given what happened in 1976 – see this week’s History column for more agonising details. We never win here, even last season when we won just about everywhere we came here on New Year’s Day all feeling like death and quickly lost 1-0. The Norwich fans sang “we did it to Leeds and we’ll do it to you” referencing the way they’d overhauled Leeds big advantage at the top of League One the season before to claim the title from them. They didn’t of course because QPR won the league, but given that Norwich subsequently had a parade and QPR didn’t, and the Rangers’ success was against the backdrop of the Faurlin saga and only achieved because the detestable Flavio Briatore had slung some filthy money at us while dear old Norwich had done it the “proper way” by mid-May you’d have been forgiven for thinking that Norwich were in fact champions after all given the coverage. Indeed two newspapers and the BBC website on three different occasions wrote “champions Norwich” before correcting themselves. Grrrrr.
It all feels rather like QPR are the less attractive, less successful of two brothers – Norwich the popular, sexually rampant, trophy laden high school jock while QPR seek a cure for their acne alone in the science lab. Perhaps it’s familiarity breeding contempt – we’ve played Norwich more than any other league side in history. It would be most handy and gratifying if the one hundred and fifteenth competitive meeting finished in a rare away win.
The perceived wisdom, often proffered by television pundits whose mate has just got the sack, is that clubs, boards and supporters are far too quick to turn on the manager. Alex Ferguson is an unbeatable example for them to use in such situations and whenever you listen to Chris Kamara after one of his Goals on Sunday regulars has just been sacked (again) he’ll always have you believe that a second Fergie dynasty would have surely resulted had they given Reidy/Robbo/Big Sam just another game or three. Presumably this is the misapprehension the Venky’s are currently labouring under at Blackburn.
Norwich’s sacking of Bryan Gunn just over two years ago was particularly early, just two games into the season, and particularly harsh given his standing in the game and at the club. Gunn, former Norwich goalkeeper and all round good guy, had done every single job there was to do at Carrow Road since hanging up his gloves and seemed a natural man to turn to when Glenn Roeder was sacked in early 2009. In one of the all time great football quotes Delia Smith said the Norwich manager must know “the Norfolk way” of doing things – saying that Roeder had been rather ruder and more abrupt with players, fans and board members than he really should have been. His results were shit as well.
Gunn couldn’t save the Canaries from relegation but was given the job permanently in the summer anyway. He spoke about steady rebuilding and consolidating in League One, and then saw his team beaten 7-1 in the first match of the season against Colchester. The result was swift and direct action – Gunn was sacked, despite subsequently presiding over a 4-0 win at Yeovil that Tuesday night, and replaced by the Colchester manager who’d inflicted that decimation Paul Lambert.
You’ll never find anybody in football with a bad word to say about Bryan Gunn. Northern the Elder used to tell me a story every so often about the QPR fans standing to a man in the away end at Carrow Road and applauding Gunn out onto the field of play for his first match after his daughter had died of leukaemia. Something QPR hating journalist and Norwich fan Mick Dennis neglects to mention when he whinges on about not being able to get a fucking cup of tea at Loftus Road on a cold day.
Ironically losing 7-1 at home on the opening day has turned out to be one of the best things that has ever happened to Norwich. Was it too soon? Was this any way to treat a club legend? The results since have spoken for themselves. Gunn’s plans for a season of consolidation were immediately torn up by Lambert who immediately set about promoting the Canaries as impressive 95 point champions. Had Norwich lost that game 2-1 or 1-0 Gunn may have stayed. Had he done so I very much doubt we’d have been playing Norwich in the Championship last season, never mind in the Premiership this. Their rise has been meteoric and shows no signs of slowing just yet – they’re ninth in the Premiership at the time of writing.
Paul Lambert should be a good manager. He’s Scottish (like all good managers and awful footballers are), he’s won everything there is to win in the game as a player including the European Cup, he’s played both at home and abroad and he has educated himself as a boss by starting at the bottom with the likes of Wycombe and Livingston. If you had to draw a managerial career blueprint his would be absolutely ideal to this point.
As a player Lambert was a strong, combative and yet classy central midfielder who won the European Cup with Dortmund after emerging through the ranks at St Mirren and making his name with Motherwell. He left Fir Park in 1996 and by the time he returned 12 months and the biggest prize in the club game later he was so vastly superior to anything else the SPL had to offer it was almost embarrassing. Lambert, one of only two current Premiership managers to lift the European Cup, helped to turn around nine years of Rangers dominance north of the border and re-assert Celtic as the top dogs with Martin O’Neil’s hand on the tiller. He reached the UEFA Cup final with Celtic too – no mean feat considering the day to day fixtures for Celtic brought them up against the likes of Bob Malcolm and Michael Duberry and their European run pitted them against Boavista, Stuttgart and Liverpool. That glittering club career seemed to weigh a little heavy on his shoulders when he moved into management. He won just twice as Livingston manager between August and February in his first season and resigned. Then at Wycombe he twice rebuilt the side, and went on a couple of memorable cup runs that saw them reach the semi final of the League Cup against Chelsea in 2007, but he couldn’t get them out of League One and the frustration of that saw him resign after a failed play off attempt in 2008. During his time there he used our old wild child Tommy Doherty in the same midfield role he himself used to perform in.
His next job was at Colchester in League One – another club that stuck with a manager after relegation only to then sack him a couple of months into the season which is always a sure fire path to failure. Lambert steadied the ship after Geraint Williams had left, and seemed to have built a side capable of winning promotion back to the Championship last year as Norwich found out to their cost on day one. His appointment at Carrow Road has seen the club rescued from the precipice and has really seen him cement his reputation as a manager. He’ll never go short of job offers after the work he’s done at Norwich, where he’s probably got a job for as long as he wants it.
Paul Lambert didn’t travel to Norwich alone when he took the job there, he also brought a couple of Colchester players with him and both Marc Tierney and David Fox are still regulars in his side now two years later and two divisions higher. Fox takes the majority of Norwich’s set pieces and in the first six games this season all five goals scored came from either a corner (two), a free kick, or a goalkeeping error (two). More recently they scored two goals from corners against Swansea in a 3-1 home win so we have to be really sharp at dead ball situations this weekend.
Their points were restricted in those early matches – five from five games – mainly due to their worrying obsession with conceding penalties. They had a spot kick given against them in their first five league matches, equalling the league record, and four of them were scored. Perhaps repeatedly facing penalties explains the form of goalkeeper John Ruddy at Liverpool where he pulled off a series of unlikely saves to preserve a 1-1 draw.
Such is the dearth of quality English goalkeepers at the moment – David Stockdale and accident prone Scott Carson are the less than convincing covers for Joe Hart in Fabio Capello’s latest squad – that any sudden burst of form sees even the most mediocre goalkeeper catapulted into contention for an international cap. Clearly Ruddy had a good game at Liverpool, but he didn’t make any saves I wouldn’t have expected our own Paddy Kenny to make and that includes the one from Luis Suarez right at the end that Match of the Day replayed on seven occasions but was little more than a good stop.
I’d seen Ruddy before that game when Norwich played at home to a poor Sunderland side and he looked incredibly nervous from even the most basic back passes. He’s since conceded a terribly soft Yakubu goal at his near post against Blackburn. I know I’m setting myself up here for him to have some sort of Lev Yashin reborn moment against Rangers but I don’t rate him that highly and I think he’ll give us at least one chance in this game.
Ruddy was out suspended when I saw Norwich against West Brom earlier this season and Lambert went with nervous teenager Declan Rudd instead – he saved a penalty on his Premier League debut, but didn’t look at all assured as you would expect given the circumstances. Incidentally striker Aaron Wilbraham, signed just before we played there last January, once kept goal for MK Dons in a 2-1 win against Bradford and was the designated substitute goalkeeper against the Baggies.
Now this time last season this game would have been billed as a clash between Norwich striker Grant Holt and QPR maverick Adel Taarabt. Taarabt scored 19 goals and registered 23 assists last season while Holt scored 23 times as Norwich finished second. As we know, Taarabt has had a difficult start to the season and is unlikely to be in the QPR team for this game – Holt meanwhile seems to be adapting to the Premiership surprisingly well.
He has three goals already, meaning he has scored in all four divisions of English football, proving there is still room for a battering ram forward in the modern game. Norwich spent a not inconsiderable amount of money in the summer on a raft of signings that I’ve seen described as ‘Premiership-lite’. People like James Vaughan, Steve Morrison and Elliott Bennett didn’t exactly look like the sort of names capable of making a big impact in the top flight.
But Lambert clearly scouts his players well. When I saw Norwich against Sunderland Bennett looked really lively – the former Brighton winger combining in a dangerous, pacey right flank duo with Spurs loanee and long term QPR target Kyle Naughton. Armand Traore and Jamie Mackie should have the pace and work rate to deal with them but should we be left to rely on Taarabt or Hill or both out there this Saturday we could struggle. Anthony Pilkington was also a risk, moving up two divisions from Huddersfield while at the same time recovering from a broken leg. He’s also recovered from a horrendous missed chance at Old Trafford to go on and register three times since (four in total this season) and he looks a real find as well. The average age of the Norwich side against Sunderland was less than 25.
Pilkington has slotted into a diamond shaped midfield system favoured by Paul Lambert that QPR completely failed to cope with in both meetings last season – Norwich took four points from QPR, missed a penalty in the 0-0 draw at Loftus Road, and stopped Rangers from scoring in 180 minutes of football. We simply must deal with that set up, particularly the man at the pinnacle of the diamond – Wes Hoolahan played there against us last season and ran amok.
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